Manufacturers and owners of conventional mobile vehicles such as cars, trucks, motorcycles, and so on face many certain problems associated with the security of the mobile vehicle. In particular, one problem associated with mobile vehicles has traditionally been theft. Stolen vehicles can be hard to locate, and when stolen vehicles are disassembled and sold for parts, it may become even more difficult to track down the parts and identify the parties responsible for stealing or processing the vehicle. The sale of stolen vehicle parts is a problem for manufacturers as well, as it introduces illicit competition from used and worn parts, and harms the industry and consumers generally.
In addition to the problem of theft, manufacturers may encounter warranty issues with owners who may tamper with certain components of the vehicle. For example, an owner or professional “tuner shop” may reprogram the electric control unit (ECU) responsible for the vehicle engine with performance mappings that increase the engine performance (“tuner updates”). However this “tuning” also results in a greatly shortened engine life. Once the engine breaks, the ECU will be re-programmed with the original settings so that the manufacturer cannot determine that the warranty is no longer valid due to “tuner” tampering.
The inventors observe that telematics units within telematics-equipped mobile vehicles may control and monitor various components of the vehicles, as well as provide subscribers with connectivity to a telematics service provider (TSP). The TSP provides the subscriber with an array of services ranging from emergency call handling and stolen vehicle recovery to diagnostics monitoring and turn-by-turn navigation. Telematics units are often provisioned and activated at a point of sale when a subscriber purchases a telematics-equipped vehicle. Upon activation, the telematics unit can be utilized to provide a subscriber with telematics services.
It is an object in part of certain implementations of the present invention to utilize the telematics unit on mobile vehicles to address the problems of tampering and theft. However, while this is an object underlying certain implementations of the invention, it will be appreciated that the invention is not limited to systems that solve the problems noted herein. Moreover, the inventors have created the above body of information for the convenience of the reader and expressly disclaim all of the foregoing as prior art; the foregoing is a discussion of problems discovered and/or appreciated by the inventors, and is not an attempt to review or catalog the prior art.